Comic Book Review – Cat-Eyed Boy

Cat-Eyed Boy: The Perfect Edition Volume One and Volume Two (2023)
Written & Illustrated by Kazuo Umezz

Kazuo Umezz is one of the most famous Japanese horror manga authors and started his career in the 1950s. Bucking the trends of the time, Umezz incorporated gory & grotesque imagery often associated with Japanese folklore, especially the Yokai – the umbrella term for ghosts, demons, and other nefarious spirits. One of his most well-known series was Cat-Eyed Boy, initially serialized in the pages of Shōnen Gaho, an anthology magazine. Like most manga that prove to be a success, there was an anime series (though it was more like voiceovers and little paper cutouts) as well as a live-action series in the mid-2000s. While the title character does prove to be an important part of each story arc, the stories were more like serialized horror anthology tales, a la American Horror story.

Cat-Eyed is introduced to us living in a human family’s attic. He observes the goings-on through knotholes in the attic floorboards, which leads to the feline kid witnessing moments of horror. The first story, “The Immortal Man,” is the simplest. A wealthy man has a son, Otsuka. Otsuka is on his way to school and avoids a strange-looking man. The disfigured person keeps appearing and eventually explains that he wants Otsua to take a wrapped object to his father. Upon opening it, the father discovers it is a severed hand. Cat-Eyed Boy becomes increasingly more involved, and we find out that the father had severely slighted this man years prior, leaving him in his current state. It’s the sort of horror revenge story you’ve probably seen before, but it’s made all the more strange because of how simplistic the dialogue and story structure are – like a demonic Grimm’s Fairy Tale.

What Cat-Eyed Boy (CEB) eventually becomes is a bridge for the reader between the humans and the yokai. The common theme through almost every story is the divide created between those with “pleasant” appearances versus the disfigured & different who are pushed to the fringes of society. When the yokai decide to lash out at the human world, there is always at least a small bit of justification. Humans have either intruded into their realm or have done them harm. They also serve as cautionary tales about how we speak to and treat other people, as in the world of CEB, you never know who actually is a spirit.

In my opinion, the tone of the stories gets better with the third entry in volume one, “The Tsunami Summoners.” It takes on the air of a folktale, focused on the inhabitants of a seaside community who live in a manner likely considered old-fashioned for the time. “The One-Legged Monster of Oudai” is another rural tale centered around a little boy who likes to catch insects and pin them in his collection. He has been harming the forest, so the yokai exact appropriate revenge that seeks to put the child in their perspective to understand the cruelty of his hobby. The story that connects both collections is the epic “The Band of One Hundred Monsters,” which reveals a group of supposed yokai who are actually people with disfigurements pushed out of society. There are some supernatural goings on as well. I found this one to be too long as I got the point early on, and the story kept going and going.

The second volume is similar. The stories follow the same style and tone. It becomes more obvious that the series was successful because we got a couple of stories printed (at least partly) in color. Umezz infuses humor into these stories mainly through CEB, who always has a quip or retort aimed at an ungrateful human whose skin he’s just saved. 

I found the more extended the stories, the less impact they had for me, which led to the quick, done in just a few parts, narrative to be my favorites. The second volume includes the ridiculous “The Meatball Monster,” which is the worst of the whole lot. It’s a very one-note horror – a sentient wad of meat terrorizes a family – and just keeps continuing on and on. The monster isn’t scary, and the big reveal makes it even less so. “The Thousand-Handed Monster” is a much better tale from the second book. It is a speedy read but effective still, focused around a shrine whose statue may be coming to life and killing people. 

The artwork here is not as unsettling as someone like Junji Ito. It feels like the tradition of Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and other popular manga/anime from the 1960s. That’s where I felt the biggest tonal clash because the character’s expressions don’t always convey the level of fear & anxiety that they should. I’ve heard that Umezz’s The Drifting Classroom is a more grim series, which I may check out. But I didn’t find CEB to be all that scary; instead, it was an interesting cultural artifact from a time past. If you’ve read this far, I’d love your suggestions for good horror manga. I’ve read a lot of Junji Ito, so trying to stretch beyond his work to some creator who deserves more love.